A national cross-sectional survey of health literacy of caregivers attending Canadian pediatric emergency departments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Health literacy assessment is key to better meeting family needs and developing informed strategies to promote positive health outcomes for children. The objective of this study was to describe the health literacy of caregivers who use Canadian pediatric emergency departments and relate it to demographic and visit-specific variables. METHODS: This study utilized a descriptive, cross-sectional survey design with medical record review. A bilingual survey was electronically administered to caregivers presenting to 10/15 Canadian pediatric emergency departments. Health literacy was assessed using the Newest Vital Sign tool. RESULTS: 1957 caregivers completed the Newest Vital Sign assessment. Caregivers' mean age was 37.8 ± 7.7 years, 74.3% (1449/1950) were mothers and 51.9% (993/1912) had a university/professional degree. 12.0% (235/1957) had a high likelihood of limited health literacy, 16.5% (323/1957) had possible limited health literacy and 71.5% (1399/1957) demonstrated adequate health literacy. Adequate health literacy scores were associated with having a university/professional degree [aOR 1.47 (95% CI 1.11-1.94)] and having a household annual income of over $25,000 [aOR 4.10 (2.66-6.31)]; they were inversely associated with having a total of 4 or more children [aOR 0.61 (0.40-0.91)] and having a main language at home other than English or French [aOR 0.32 (0.23-0.43)]. INTERPRETATION: With over 1/4 caregivers facing health literacy challenges, health care providers in emergency departments must be cognizant of their communication and education approach when caring for families and providing at-home care guidance. Clinicians should consider applying health literacy principles to all family encounters to help address healthcare disparities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".